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Modi govt proposal would "undermine" archaeological sites, monuments to become "susceptible" to damage

The Union Cabinet decision to amend the Ancient Monuments
and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 2010, to allow centrally-funded
projects to be set up in the prohibited area of the nationally-protected monuments
is likely to adversely impact historical structures of national importance.

Pointing this out, the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust
(SAHMAT), a politico-cultural group formed in the memory of young theatre
artiste Safdar Hashmi, who was brutally murdered for performing a street play
in Jhandapur, UP, in 1989, has said the amendment allowing new construction in
the immediate vicinity of protected properties of national importance would
make monuments “most susceptible to heavy vibrations, chemical effects or
mechanical stresses.”

The “prohibited areas”, under the current law, is the designated
area up to hundred metres from the delineated boundary. Those who have signed the
statement include members of the National Monuments Authority (NMA) M Saleem
Beg, Meera Das, Bharat Bhushan, Shalini Mahajan, and Pukhraj Maroo, several historians
including Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib, well-known theatre and cinema
personality MK Raina, art historian Geeta Kapur, well-known artist Vivan
Sundaram, and senior economist Prabhat Patnaik.

SAHMAT said, “In most sites, unexcavated structural remains
that open up avenues of further research also fall within these prohibited zones.
Construction activity of any nature will inflict irreversible damage to the
monument as well as to the prospect of future study and understanding of the
historic context of the site.”

Safdar Hashmi

Appealing parliamentarians belonging to various political
parties to show their “continued resolve to preserve and protect the monuments
and sites of national importance”, the statement said, “These are significant
part of the soft power of India as also collective universal cultural assets
and physical memories of our glorious past.”

The 2010 Act has the stated objective to “preserve,
conserve, protect and maintain all ancient monuments and archaeological sites
and remains declared of national importance, and their surrounding areas up to
a distance of 300 metres (or more as may be specified in certain cases) in all
directions”.

The Act replaced an ordinance, promulgated that year on January
23, 2010. A committee report, which formed the basis of the Act, had said that “it
is no question of expediency or feeling whether we shall preserve the buildings
of past time or not.”

The committee had insisted, “We have no right whatever to
touch them. They are not ours. They belong to those who built them, partly to
all the generations of mankind who follow us.”

Constitution of India, in seventh Schedule declares built
heritage as a significant public good.